My view of Israel

Us in the eye of Google

2010-09-04T07:07:00.001-07:00

the "Freedom Flotilla"

2010-06-13T07:05:00.000-07:00

as this is probably the hottest issue in Israel at the moment,

I'm sending you two videos which shows the story from our point of view:

Glenn Beck

We con the world

which was removed from youtube:

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/news.aspx/138015

Happy Passover!

2010-03-30T01:03:00.000-07:00

Today starts the Jewish Holiday of Passover.
We celebrate the escape of the Jewish slaves with Moses from Egypt, and we make Maza which should resemble the bread that Jewish made when they run away and had no time for proper making of bread.

You want to know what we do with this Maza? Here is a short movie for explanations:

Israeli Defense Force in Haiti

2010-01-23T07:58:00.001-08:00

Israel built a field hospital in Haiti. I think it's in our culture, that in a time of need nothing else matters - do what you got to do to help first. So we were the first to build an hospital there and we started to save lives while other volunteers were still arranging. Probably the experience we gained about emergencies helps us in situations like this.
I am aware that we are an easy target for a lot of political organizations, but I was really surprised to see that those voices kept saying terrible thing about us, even in the subject of helping it Haiti. They start by blaming us on helping Haiti to shift the focus from our fight with the palestinians, they say we use US founding for this goal, some even go as far as saying we only went there to still and sell organs.
That really makes me feel bad. I know that people will look bad upon us when we are at war, there is no way out of that, a war is an ugly business. But when we are taking our best efforts to help those in need we get the same responses! What should we do then? Is there any chance that our haters will see that we are not evil? On situations like that I too start to believe some of our critics are nothing more then Anti-semites.

Israeli Tourism Commercials

2010-01-17T07:14:00.001-08:00

I believe those commercials are unofficial, and made by private people. For some reason it seems that those who made those commercials focus on one aspect - the appearance of Israelis.
I did actually heard tourist talk about the good looks of Israelis, but whether it's true or not, I wouldn't see it as the main reason to come to Israel.

If I would have to make a commercial, I would probably focus on the landscapes of Israel, it's historical value, it's political complexity and diversity in population's point of view.

Israel in the eyes of the world

2009-12-01T12:07:00.000-08:00

I, as an Israeli, often feel like the entire world is against us, not just our arabian neighbors.

Few blames anti-Semitism, but I believe there are other reasons, the most dominant of those would be political interests. Israel is a small country, with no natural resources, not a lot of men power. In addition to that we are surrounded by big and rich arab countries, which are against us:

Most of the countries choose the stronger ally, while the U.S is an exception, since they have their own oil resources.

This is the only explanation I can imagine that will explain how come organizations like the United Nations Human Rights Council, rejects pro Israel speeches while accepting a clear anti-israel ones.

Ignored Israeli testimonies:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QYifo19scI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqyB04klExU

My real pain in the subject comes when I see good people, not motivated by political forces turn against Israel. The reason for that is the suffering of the palestinian people, and they do suffer. When good people hear about the suffering of others they have to find a cause, a target to fight so they can stop the suffering, and Israel which is in a conflict with the palestinians, seems like the obvious choice.

For this reason, political forces choose to focus on the middle east conflict, to gain support in their choosing of the arab countries over Israel.
There is more to say about the conflict then can be summed on this post. About the horrible way they attack us, About the rich arab countries deliberately ignoring palestinian problems to make it harder on Israel, about the impossible effort from Israel to keep humanity during it's fights. And yet, it seems like we always need to protect our actions, why is it not obvious that we don't want the war? That we are doing no intended harm?

Economy in Israel

2009-11-06T15:51:00.001-08:00

Politics in Israel

2009-09-02T14:45:00.001-07:00

We can't really talk about Israel without going into politics.
The politics in Israel was one of the main things I didn't miss while traveling with Up With People :)
There are so many conflicts...

I'm going to talk about few of them, and not with the same focus.
The main issue in the news right now might be the attempt to free Gilad Shalit:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilad_Shalit

More general issues would be:
Relationship with the Arabics: The way to treat the terrorists threat, the way to react to arabic actions. The status of arabic people who live (legally or not) in Israel.

How much Judaism is part of Israel? should we make it easier for jews to come to Israel (since it was founded as shelter for jews), should we have laws to ensure jewish majority in the population? The jewish laws reflect greatly on the country law: We celebrate Jewish holidays and events, You can only get married or divorced by a specific religious groups, which means that a Christian and a jew can not get married together in Israel, not to talk about gay marriage (You can however get married outside of Israel and get a union recognition). Some other processes require religious approval, and a lot of organizations (like public transportation) are not allowed to work on saturday because of religious reasons.

The status of immigrants (legal or not).
The salary of teachers (because the level of schools seems to drop down)
The amount of money that goes to the military, should the service be required? what should be the status of someone who escapes the military?
The amount of money that goes into social needs. Right now there are plenty of new laws to protect the employees, that harms the employers, and makes it almost imposible to fire an employee. The irony is that the employees who need this protection, are the ones who's employers don't follow the laws any way.
And an ongoing subject is the corruption in politics, people in politics keep getting caught and jailed for different crimes (our last president is accused at the moment in sexual harassment), and the public get frustrated from the system, since there is no one to vote for. Democracy is defiantly not something to be proud of, a lot of adjustments are needed. My father says that a key element to improve the system would be to make sure everyone in politics studied to get there (like a test in politics). He have some other ideas that I don't remember at the moment.

Hate crime in TelAviv

2009-08-02T16:33:00.000-07:00

Hello "Israel Group"
A hate crime took place in Tel Aviv last night. Someone went on a shooting rampage in a meeting of gay youth. Two are dead, 11 wounded, some seriously. The murderer has escaped. This afternoon queers took to the streets in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa and Beersheva. Many Parliament members and public representatives spoke in these sad gatherings. One Parliament member, Shelly Yechimovits, said that some of the boys and girls wounded, lie alone in hospital. Their families, shocked more by the discovery that they are gay then by the fact they have been the target of a terror attack, will not come and sit at their bedside.

anti hate crime demonstration in Tel Aviv. Aug 2nd 2009

[The information here was taken from mail that CoucheSurfing RAMNON user send]

The language of the Hebrewman

2009-07-03T15:56:00.000-07:00

Hello my friends who are interested in Israel!

Here is some information about the Hebrew language:
In Hebrew we have 22 letters:א,ב,ג,ד,ה,ו,ז,ח,ט,י,כ,ל,מ,נ,ס,ע,פ,צ,ק,ר,ש,ת
We read from right to left
!od ew seY
We have five letters which are written differently when positioned in the end of the word (just to make things complicated)
We almost never use vowels signs, and know how to read the words by recognition (almost like Chinese)
Hebrew have two forms of letters, the "square" form which is above, and the "cursive" form which is used for handwriting.
Until the 19th century, Hebrew hasn't been spoken for thousands of years and was only used for religious and literature reasons, now it is used as the official language in Israel.

Fun fact:
"Ani" in Hebrew = "Me" in English
"Me" in Hebrew = "Who" in English
"Who" in Hebrew = "He" in English
"He" in Hebrew = "She" in English

A site to play with Hebrew:
http://www.hebrew-verbs.co.il/

A song about Hebrew:

Opportunity to make a family happier

2009-06-20T15:17:00.000-07:00

Hello my friends from around the world.
The next email is not going to be fun as others.
I received the attached mail from a father who lost his son to the conflict.
You asked to know more about my country and I think that this should be part of this, even that it's not common.

This person, Yossi is his name, tells the story of his son, Blondi, who died in 2003 by a suicide murderer.
His son probably wanted to travel around the world after his military service, the same way I did, and probably would have met amazing people the same way I met you.
But he didn't.
His father asks if we can take his attached picture and take our picture with it in different places around the world, to give Blondi the travel he will never be able to have by himself.
I thought the best I can do is asking all my international friends to take their picture with him.
so, if you would like to help, take a picture with blondi, and send it to his father on: yossi@blondi.co.il
more information can be found here:
http://www.blondi.co.il

and you can see his video here:

I promise my next Israeli email wouldn't be a sad one, but this is indeed part of our country.
Thank you!

I promised a conflict

2009-06-14T15:11:00.000-07:00

When I go back home I'll have more time to write my opinions about the issues in Israel, but now because of lack of time and motivation, I will just add this link for this movie which represent a very realistic image of the conflict in the west bank:

tell me what you think, I hope you enjoy!

let the fun begin!

2009-06-02T14:58:00.000-07:00

Hello dear friends!

You asked for information about Israel, so here we go:
In the way I see it, we are all minorities in Israel, and I believe that everyone might suffer some kind of discrimination.
On the other hand, the discrimination is not as bad knowing that everyone shares it, and there is no one group with dominant power.

I hope the next old video can demonstrate the culture variety situation in Israel:

I encourage you to add your own questions for my next email :)
Thank you for your interest!

and just for fun
I found this video related to the last one, same main actor, also from an old Israeli parody movie but not as old as the first movie:

does it reminds anyone else the movie - scarface?